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A Christmas First for New England? Each State Can Claim One.

New England is as unlikely a place as there is to celebrate a Christmas first. After all, Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut officially banned the holiday. It wasn’t until the mid-19^th century that most New Englanders took the day off, let alone trimmed trees, sang carols or sent cards.

And yet, with a little imagination, we can find a Christmas first in each of the New England states.

First Christmas Tree in Connecticut

A German father and son collecting a tree, painting by Franz Krüger

Painting of a German father and son collecting a tree, by Franz Krüger

A Hessian soldier named Hendrick Roddemore put up a Christmas tree in Windsor Locks, Conn., in 1777, giving Connecticut the claim to the first Christmas tree.

The Americans captured Roddemore, a mercenary, at the Battle of Bennington.

Many prisoners from that battle were sent to Boston and then elsewhere. Roddemore ended up at the farm of Samuel Denslow in Windsor Locks. Denslow let him live in a small cabin on what is now the Noden-Reed Farm and home of the Windsor Locks Historical Society.

In 1777, Roddemore raised a Christmas tree inside that small cabin. He continued to live there until well after the war, putting up a tree every year. Today, a stone marks the spot where Roddemore put up that first tree.

First North American Christmas in Maine

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First buildings on St. Croix

Maine can claim perhaps the best Christmas first: the first Christmas, in 1604. It happened on St. Croix Island, the lost French colony of Maine.

St. Croix Island, now on the border between New Brunswick and Maine, was settled by a small band of Frenchmen headed by Sieur DeMons. Samuel Champlain served as historian and navigator. The expedition included thieves from Paris prisons and noblemen from the court of Henry IV, Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, artisans, merchants and sailors.

The Frenchmen arrived in June, almost three years before Jamestown started. They built a fort, houses and a handmill, and they planted gardens and a field of rye.

On Christmas day, the French colonists, all men, attended services in a new chapel. They probably held two, one for the Protestants, one for the Catholics.

Then they gathered inside next to a roaring fire, told stories, joked and reminisced about France. They had a feast — perhaps roast venison or rabbit stew.

The St. Croix settlement did not last. Most of the men were felled by a mysterious disease – probably scurvy. By spring they decided to move, packed up their houses and moved to Port Royal, which is now Annapolis.

First American Christmas Card in Massachusetts

A Christmas first for Massachusetts: The Louis Prang Christmas card.

One man can take credit for the first American Christmas card: Louis Prang. He fled the German wars of 1848 and came to Boston. Prang went to work for an engraver, eventually setting up his own lithography shop.

The first Christmas card had already been sent in 1843 by an Englishman named Sir Henry Cole. He had a thousand cards designed and printed, but he couldn’t send them all. So he sold the leftovers for a shilling. Word spread about the cards, and soon English printers were churning them out.

The fad didn’t spread to America until Louis Prang found out about it. He decided the potential market was huge. In 1875 he printed his first Christmas cards for the London market, and the next year he sold them throughout the Northeast. It took but two more years for him to corner the greeting card market in the United States.

By 1881, Louis Prang was printing more than 5 million Christmas cards a year. His Prang Lithographic Factory in Roxbury became a tourist attraction, and he often conducted tours himself. His house and factory are still standing, the house at 45 Centre St. and the factory at 270-286 Roxbury St.

Eventually Louis Prang moved his business to Springfield, where he continued to make Christmas cards as well as child-safe art materials – which you can still buy under the Prang name.

A White House Christmas Tree from NH

The 1997 Christmas ornament depicting the Pierce White House

New Hampshire native Sarah Josepha Hale deserves credit for promoting the Christmas tree in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book.

In 1856, another New Hampshire native introduced the first Christmas tree to the White House.

President Franklin Pierce and First Lady Jane Pierce invited the Sunday school class of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to join them in trimming the tree for Christmas. The Pierces were mourning for their son, Benny, who died in a train wreck shortly before they moved into the White House.

It was no accident that the Pierces chose a Sunday school class to trim the tree. Christmas trees had gained such acceptance in Sunday schools they were even called ‘Sunday school trees.’ Children who memorized Bible verses got rewarded with trinkets and candy hanging from the tree. When cold weather caused churchgoers to stay home, a decorated indoor tree enticed children to brave the winter temperatures.

The Pierces had never taken a Puritanical attitude toward Christmas. In 1824, Pierce’s father, Benjamin, hosted 21 veteran soldiers from the American Revolution to his home in Hillsoborough, N.H., for a Christmas feast.

Sighting of Santa Claus in RI

A Newport, R.I., resident wrote this

Clement Moore wrote A Visit From St. Nicholas for his children, never intending it to become the most popular Christmas poem ever. Nor did he expect it would forever define Santa Claus as a jolly old elf who flew around on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

Moore grew up the son of the Episcopalian bishop of New York who twice served as president of Columbia University. His mother inherited a vast estate, now the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Moore was an intellectual, a professor of Biblical Learning and author of the first Hebrew-American dictionary.

In 1822, Moore borrowed some Dutch and German Christmas lore for his poem, a gift to his six children. A friend copied it and submitted it to the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel. The newspaper published it on Dec. 23, 1823, and for many years thereafter. It wasn’t until 1837 that Moore was identified as the author. Moore himself didn’t acknowledge authorship until 1844 – and only because his children insisted.

So how does Rhode Island fit in?

Sometime in the 1850s, Moore bought a home in Newport, R.I., and became a summer resident.

The house is known as ‘Cedars,’ ‘Clement C. Moore House,’ and ‘The Night Before Christmas House.’ It still stands at 25 Catherine St., though it has been broken up into apartments. Some have claimed that he wrote ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ in Newport. The Redwood Library tells us that’s unlikely as the house hadn’t been built when Moore wrote the poem.

The First National Christmas Tree from Vermont

The National Christmas Tree.

In 1923, a General Electric engineer named Frederick Morris Feiker wrote to President Calvin Coolidge suggesting he light the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse. Coolidge asked the president of Middlebury College to donate a tree from Vermont.

Wealthy Middlebury alumni paid to ship the 48-foot-tall balsam fir to Washington, D.C. A crane put the tree in place a few weeks before Christmas, and $5,000 worth of GE electrical cables illuminated the 2,500 red, white and green Christmas lights.

At 3 p.m. on Dec. 24, a choir began a two-hour concert of Christmas carols. At dusk, President Coolidge pushed the button to light the tree. As many as 9,000 people came to the Ellipse to sing carols over the next four hours.

This story was updated in 2020.

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Eat Like A President, Part II

In honor of President’s Day, the New England Historical Society brings you another guide to how to eat like a president.

John F. Kennedy. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

We focus on New England presidents beginning with John Adams and including one or two diversions such as Abraham Lincoln. (Though it’s worth pointing out that Legal Seafood’s clam chowder has been served at every presidential inauguration since Ronald Reagan.)

Eat Like a President

Green Dragon

John Adams drank a tankard of hard cider when he got up in the morning, and when in Boston he stopped off later at the Green Dragon Tavern.

Paul Revere talks in his memoirs about meeting John and the other Sons of Liberty, like Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, to start a revolution. The tavern isn’t exactly where it was back in the day, but absent the karaoke bar and table tents it’s quite evocative of the Revolutionary era.

When at home, John and Abigail ate typical New England foods such as codfish cakes, New England clam chowder, Johnny cake, apple butter, succotash, Indian pudding and gingerbread.

John Quincy Adams

Their son, John Quincy Adams, was notoriously indifferent to food despite his exposure to many fine international cuisines. He liked fruit, and was known to say, “Five or six small crackers and a glass of water give me a sumptuous dinner.”

Pie at the White House

Franklin Pierce was another president who liked solid, traditional fare. It was a preference he would have picked up at his father’s tavern in Hillsborough, N.H., where a Christmas dinner was once held for Revolutionary War veterans. Pierce and his family were fond of maple syrup and New Hampshire fried pies, made with dried apples.

Abraham Lincoln, 1858

Abraham Lincoln, though not a New Englander, had relatives in Massachusetts. His distant cousin Levi Lincoln supported his political career. You can visit Sturbridge Village and see his former mansion where Abraham Lincoln dined in September 1848.

Levi Lincoln, former governor and then the mayor of Worcester, held a meal that Cousin Abraham remembered long afterward. Thirteen years later, he told Massachusetts Gov. Henry Gardner:

I had been chosen to Congress then from the wild West, and with hayseed in my hair I went to Massachusetts, the most cultured State in the Union, to take a few lessons in deportment.

Lincoln, Gardner said, added

That the dinner at Governor Lincoln’s by reason of its elaborate hospitality and social brilliancy was different in kind from any function he had ever attended before. He remarked upon the beauty of the china, the fineness of the silverware and the richness of all the table appointments, and spoke of the company of distinguished and thoroughly educated whom he met there in the animated, free and intimate conversation inspired by such an accomplished host as Governor Lincoln.

Picky Presidential Eater

Where Calvin Coolidge developed his eating habits

Calvin Coolidge, as a state lawmaker and governor, enjoyed dining at the private Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. He was a fastidious eater who believed chicken should be raised close to where they were eaten and kept chickens at the White House. They had an unusual flavor because the chicken yard was built on top of Theodore Roosevelt’s mint bed.

Coolidge liked roast beef, Vermont pickles and corn muffins. According to the Food Timeline, his fastidiousness created a problem for the White House chef, who couldn’t get the recipe for corn muffins right. First Lady Grace Coolidge finally sent off to a Northampton inn to get the recipe.

Coolidge’s discriminating dining habits are illustrated by several versions of a story told about him while he attended Amherst College. Here’s one version:

Dwight Morrow was a classmate of Coolidge’s at Amherst and the father of Anne Morrow, the wife of Charles A. Lindbergh. (Coolidge later appointed Morrow as Ambassador to Mexico.) Morrow used to like to tell the story of when he and Coolidge went to the same boarding house to take their meals. Hash was served frequently. When it was served, Morrow said Coolidge turned very grave. The landlady had a dog and a cat. As the hash was being served, Coolidge would ask “Where’s the dog?” and the dog would be brought in. Then he’d ask “Where’s the cat?” — and the cat would be called in. Only then would he help himself to the hash.

The Modern Era

George H.W. Bush in his broccoli-eating days.

As a member of Congress, John F. Kennedy stayed at a hotel near the Statehouse in Boston. He notoriously showed up at the nearby 21^st Amendment for a beer he never paid for.

Kennedy also liked to read his Sunday paper at the Union Oyster House, where another presidential wannabe, Daniel Webster, used to consume six plates of oysters and a tumbler of brandy for lunch.

Like Coolidge, Kennedy liked corn muffins. He also dearly loved Boston clam chowder. White House chef Rene Verdon remembered,

He asked me to prepare it for him on many occasions…I did everything I could to satisfy Mr. Kennedy’s New England liking for good fish cookery. Quite naturally, as a Catholic, he had it every Friday.

When vacationing on Cape Cod, the Kennedys liked the homemade ice cream from the Four Seas ice cream parlor in Centerville, near the family compound in Hyannisport. Jackie Kennedy’s favorite flavor: peach.

George H.W. Bush was as fastidious about vegetables as Calvin Coolidge was about everything else. He hated broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. Barbara Bush said,

The day he was 60, he said to me: `I am never going to eat broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower or cabbage again.’ And he hasn’t!

Bush and his family liked lobster and ice cream, though. When vacationing in Kennebunkport, they enjoyed Mabel’s Lobster Claw, a seafood restaurant that’s been serving tourists since the 1950s. The Bushes allegedly liked the peppermint stick ice cream.

And on the walls of Frank Pepe’s Pizza Napoletana in New Haven hangs a framed photo of Bill Clinton. Though now a vegan, he liked a good white clam apizza in his day.

This story about eating like a president was updated in 2022.

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The Revolutionary War Veterans Christmas Dinner in New Hampshire

Benjamin Pierce, a war hero and father of future president Franklin Pierce, threw a Christmas dinner for 21 Revolutionary War veterans in 1824.

Ammi Andrews of Ipswich, Mass., was the oldest guest at 89; the youngest was Nathaniel Johnson at 59.

(For a complete list of the attendees, click here.)

Pierce himself had just turned 67. Born Dec. 25, 1757, he was plowing a field on his uncle’s farm in Chelmsford, Mass., when he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Pierce, 18, immediately enlisted. He fought at Bunker Hill and stood on Dorchester Heights to watch the British evacuate Boston. At the Battle of Saratoga, he earned a promotion for bravery.

After the war he moved to Hillsborough, N.H., where he prospered. In 1827, the people of New Hampshire elected him governor.

Revolutionary War Veterans Dinner

The visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States on the country’s 50^th anniversary inspired Pierce to hold the dinner for Revolutionary War veterans.

He hosted it at the large tavern he owned, an ideal venue for eating, drinking and telling old war stories.

The old soldiers gathered at 11 a.m., and Pierce gave them an emotional welcome. They then elected Ammi Andrews and 83-year-old John McColley president and vice president of the day.

The Pierce Homestead, where Benjamin Pierce had a Christmas dinner for Revolutionary War veterans.

The Rev. John Lawton offered a prayer, and the veterans launched into their reminiscences. Ammi Andrews told a story about capturing a British sentinel during Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec.

At 1:30, they moved into the dining room and ate dinner while offering 13 toasts, one for each of the original states. The first nine toasts honored Washington, the war heroes and hard-won battles. The last four called for patriotism, liberty and the preservation of the union of the states. Twelve more toasts followed, praising the U.S. victory in the War of 1812, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Greeks fighting for liberty.

Earnest Patriotism

Benjamin Pierce, then a general in the New Hampshire militia, concluded the toast by remembering the war. He also praised God for preserving all present, and he thanked the Creator for allowing them ‘to see our beloved country so rapidly increase in population.” Pierce also gave thanks for ‘the progress of the arts and sciences of agriculture of commerce and manufactures.’

Pierce gave other dinners for Revolutionary War veterans. He was a discriminating host who didn’t invite just any veteran to his dinners. According to The Granite Monthly

His earnest patriotism was shown on the occasion of his inviting nineteen of his old Revolutionary compatriots (all residents of Hillsborough), to dinner on one of the anniversaries of a Continental triumph. This happened but a few years previous to his death. One of the veterans remarked the absence of one of their number who lived in the town, and mentioned the fact to the Governor, who said, “I invite no one to my table who is afraid of the smell of gunpowder.”

The dining room where the Revolutionary War veterans dined. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Postscript

Some Revolutionary War veterans lived long enough to have their photos taken. In 1864, the Rev. E.B. Hillard took on the mission of recording their memories and their images before they died.

Of those he tracked down, four came from New England. (None attended Pierce’s 1824 dinner.)

Samuel Downing

Samuel Downing of Newburyport, Mass., 102, served under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Saratoga. He remembered Arnold as a bloody fellow, as brave a man as ever lived, stern, but kind to his men. “They didn’t treat him right,” Downing remembered. “But he ought to have been true.”

The Rev. Daniel Waldo

The Rev. Daniel Waldo, born in Windham, Conn. The army drafted him at 16 and a year later the British took him prisoner. At the age of 94, the U.S. House of Representatives appointed him chaplain. At 101, he advised people to eat little and control the temper.

Lemuel Cook

Lemuel Cook, 105, of Northbury, Conn., fought at the Battle of Brandywine and the siege of Yorktown. There they had little to eat, but plenty of flies. He remembered Washington ordering them not to laugh at the British because it was bad enough to surrender without being insulted.

William Hutchings

William Hutchings, 102, of York, Maine, enlisted at the age of 15. The British took him prisoner at Castine during the Penobscot Expedition, but released him because of his young age.

This story about the Revolutionary War veterans Christmas dinner was updated in 2022.

Images: Pierce Homestead By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20697770.

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